Posts Tagged ‘picking-up-pieces’

Picking up the Pieces at Cafe Nomad

Almost three years ago I started this series of collages – Picking up the Pieces – when I could no longer find the surface of my drawing table, covered as it was with myriad leftover pieces of prints. I’ve written about this work, and the process here and a little later here. To date, I’ve completed more than 80 of these collages; and I still have drawers filled with additional scrap material. It looks like I will always have plenty of puzzle like pieces to rearrange into some workable configuration – both literally and metaphorically.

Today my friend Diana Arcadipone and I put up about 45 of these collages on the gallery wall at Cafe Nomad. The work will be up for the rest of the month of August. So if you are headed into the Western hills for a hike (or lake swim, or whatever), stop at the Cafe for a great breakfast or lunch, and check out my work on the wall! If you can’t get there, you can see a selection on the collage page of this site.

Coming full circle.

I am still cleaning out drawers and boxes (and anything else that appears in my path), which is obviously a never ending task. On the latest pile destined for the recycle bin (or a bonfire) were some small drawings & collages that I made during our first longer adventure in Italy. Although these pieces had been singled out as “not-quite-worth-saving”, they did contain some beautiful moments. Being the waste-not-want-not queen that I am, I started cutting and pasting. Again.

Yesterday I noticed that the piece of train ticket embedded in one of the now-torn-apart collages I was working with was dated 24-07-93. Exactly 18 years ago – to the day. Who says the narrative of a life is linear?

You can see a few more of the recent additions to the “Picking up the pieces” series byclicking here.

Here’s hoping that 2011 is full of all kinds of color and joy!

I really did mean to post something sooner than January 9th to wish everyone well. So much for good intentions – like getting holiday cards out on time. Ha! Same goes for New Years resolutions, so I say fuggedaboudit. No, in all honesty, at least in terms of my studio routine, 2011 has gotten off to a good start. In December, I toyed with challenging myself to do a drawing a day for the month of January. Does that count as a resolution? I’m not sure why, but somehow, the idea has gained a certain amount of traction. Nine days down and nine pieces of paper 22 x 30 inches are covered with some kind of marks or other. As the days roll by the drawings are definitely getting a little bit more interesting – though I do still question the wisdom of this plan. At some point, I promise, I’ll post some of those. In the meantime, though, you can see that I’m still picking up pieces and making collages out of them. The pieces above were all completed within the last month. Each one is about 5″ x 5″.